Gastronomic Meditations: Felicia's Fignolias

Keddy lives in Houston. Her Celeste fig bears a fair-sized crop each year, and she always tells me about it. Envious, I listen. Barbara lives down the road from me in Meadowview; her Chicago fig, suitable for our Appalachian climate, produces an abundance of figlets that ripen minutes before first frost. Susan in South Carolina has a Brown Turkey that I visit when I’m down south, even if Susan isn’t home. Once I snitched a plump fig.

My Brown Turkey is the biggest tree of all; it has a place of honor in my front yard, right smack dab in the middle of the yard. Every year, its branches reach up even higher, and the leaves get even bigger than the year before; my fig tree could clothe all of Paradise. The problem is that it can’t feed a soul. (read more)